


Tea with Not-Quite-God

by BritishParty



Category: The Yogscast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BritishParty/pseuds/BritishParty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little trip-up in the dream world lands Lomadia in a situation she’s certain she never could have dreamed up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea with Not-Quite-God

The world was blurry, out of focus.  
Lomadia struggled to sit up, every bone in her body heavier than it should’ve been. She felt like she’d been hit over the head with a brick - or four.  
What had she been doing again? She had been asleep, that much she knew. For how long? Why had she woken up?  
Lomadia squinted out at her surroundings. Had she woken up? Maybe this was just another dream.  
“Something like a dream, that much is certain,” came the voice behind her. “And what an inconvenient time you’ve picked, too.”  
That was definitely not Nilesy.  
Where was she?  
The sakura tree she’d woken up under seemed hauntingly familiar. Lomadia had seen the wooden walls surrounding the blue-roofed house before, but where she couldn’t remember.  
Turning her head towards the source of the voice was a terrible idea. The only figure within her sight glowed with all the light of the sun; the shape was seared into the backs of her eyes, glowing red behind her eyelids. Her head pounded, and she was all too suddenly aware of the blood rushing in her ears.  
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” the figure said without any apology in his voice. “I forgot you’ll be able to see a little more than would be to your liking.”  
A glaringly bright object passed in front of her closed eyes, and the light faded in an instant.  
Lomadia opened her eyes after a few seconds, seeing Kirin standing before her, an unapologetic smile tugging at his lips.  
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m not used to being seen.”  
Choosing not to respond - words were dangerous around something like him - Lomadia instead looked around at the garden she was lying in.  
It was very clearly Kirin’s house, and very clearly Kirin’s garden. Magic flowers were littered about, decorating the grass and climbing up the walls.  
“Inconvenient?” She finally asked, deciding that it was safe to question his first statement.  
Kirin pursed his lips for a moment, making no move to help her up. “Yes,” he eventually said. “I happen to have a guest over.”  
Realizing that she was, in fact, unscathed, Lomadia managed to rise to her feet and brush the grass off her clothes. “Who?” She asked. “Strife?”  
Kirin’s smile was rueful. “Not exactly,” he responded, apparently reluctant to elaborate.  
Lomadia paused for a moment, contemplating him with her head tilted.  
“Can you point me in the direction of my house?” She finally said. “Nilesy will be worried.”  
“Ah.” Here Kirin faltered, falling silent for a split second too long. “That might be more difficult than you think.”  
Lomadia turned on him, blue eyes scouring his as she looked for a reason. “Why?” She finally demanded, unable to find an answer in any of his five eyes.  
“You’re not exactly awake,” Kirin began, then paused. “You had best sit down before I continue.”  
Lomadia’s tongue burned with questions. She swallowed them back hastily, knowing Kirin would only become impatient if she kept asking.  
Obediently - she didn’t have many other options - Lomadia followed him towards his home, where a figure sat on the porch.  
The creature was less than human; maybe it had been at one point, but it resembled a fox now, at best.  
It had a vaugely human structure, but fur ran awkwardly down its back in patches, and, from what she could see of its hands, it had claws on its paw-like appendages. The skin that was showing was blackened, and two red eyes glinted out of a narrow, dark face. Water dripped off the hulking shape as it sat squashed into a chair, watching her emotionlessly.  
“This is my guest.” Kirin sat down across from it, gesturing for Lomadia to take a seat on his left - next to the monster.  
She looked at the seat, and only just then noticed what had happened to her legs.  
And the rest of her.  
In place of her human legs, she balanced awkwardly on a pair of deer’s hind legs, complete with cloven hooves. Feathers rested just at the edge of her vision - her feathers, from her arching owl wings.  
She looked up at Kirin, half-expecting it to be a magic trick. He merely gave her a not-very-reassuring smile, and nodded towards the chair.  
She collapsed into the seat, ignoring the way her new legs awkwardly angled off the blue and gold perch.  
Kirin saw the fear flicker on her face when his guest, the creature, growled lowly. He finally seemed to realize just what she was seeing.  
“Again,” he said gently, “forgive me. It is unusual to have to hide what you normally can’t see.”  
He leaned over to her, and passed a hand over her eyes. When he sat back, she was no different; but the monster next to her was.  
In the place of the dark fox-figure sat a young person, smiling at her with pointed teeth. Their blond ponytail was tipped with red that looked suspiciously like blood, and heavy red eyeliner of the same color rimmed their eyes. They wore a blue shirt with a white under-shirt, and a crooked blue witch’s hat that balanced precariously on their head.  
“Since you didn’t seem to understand me the first time,” they told her, “I said my name is Lying.”  
“Lying?” Lomadia glanced at Kirin, looking for confirmation, before remembering that she couldn’t trust him much more than a stranger named Lying.  
“I’m sorry you had to see my less-than-graceful form,” Lying said to her, something in their voice making her turn to face them. “Typically that form is a bit more well-kept, but things have been getting difficult lately.” Their smile was wide and hungry, and Lomadia trusted them just that much less.  
“Yes, you have been letting go a bit too much,” Kirin said. “It was probably interference from you that brought her here.”  
“Yes,” Lomadia cut in, “let’s talk about me. To start, why do I have deer legs?”  
Kirin looked confused - more confused than he should. “You don’t normally see them?”  
“No,” Lomadia managed through gritted teeth. “No, I don’t.”  
“Well, they’re explained easy enough,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Your true form is that of a satyr. Ever since you began to become a witch - a true witch, not just a household witch - you’ve been changing. This is what you actually look like now.”  
She swallowed with some difficulty. “Then how did Lying look like - like _that_?”  
Kirin’s smile was finally apologetic, as if he wished she hadn’t seen that. “They’re in a particularly tight spot. Alternate dimensions collapsing with them as the focal point, new magics being born around them, the universe leaking through the bottom of their well.”  
“The universe?” Turning her startled blue eyes on Lying had no effect on them; they just shrugged like it was nothing.  
“I’ve had a few bad days,” they said nonchalantly. “Happens to everyone.”  
“Yes,” Kirin added tightly, and for Lomadia’s benefit said, “They’ve become so powerful their _really_ bad days could rip a hole in the fabric of the world.”  
All too bravely Lomadia let her mind open, searching with a pair of unseen eyes for their auras. Kirin’s words had roused her curiosity, and she wanted to see this power for herself.  
The second she began to look, too-much-magic-too-quickly, there’s-no-way-there-can-be-this-much flooded into her senses, stunning her and leaving her drained and on a high and everything in between. Her physical eyes closed with the force, and she tried to shut herself down, tried to block herself from the agony of the sheer power around her.  
Lying’s smile was wolfish, delighted even. “I was wondering when you’d try.”  
Opening her eyes proved too much; even though she kept her mind closed their auras threatened to overwhelm her again, to pin her down and bend her to their will.  
“Remember,” Kirin said gently, his voice somehow crossing the static border of power, “you can see things that are normally hidden. Your true sight has manifested into an actual eye. Open only the two and not all three.”  
His words sent a brief flare of panic through her, but she forced it down, and with an effort of will opened only two eyes.  
Lying and Kirin had not moved at all, and there was nothing different about them. Their eyes, blue and blue, watched her, one set joyous, the other patient.  
“Better?” Kirin’s voice was gentle, as though he knew how mind-shattering that had been. “I forgot you only began learning true sight recently.”  
“Well, thanks for remembering,” she grumbled. “There’s more gentle ways to teach it to me.”  
“It’s your fault,” came Lying’s sulky voice. “You tried to see us.”  
“Sod off,” was Lomadia’s only reply.  
“Now, now,” Kirin said chidingly, his presence expanding to flatten their grumbles.  
“Lomadia,” he began, “you were very far from home. What were you doing?”  
Almost grateful for the sudden return to the topic, Lomadia paused to think. “I’m not sure,” she finally said. “I drank something and fell asleep. I think something happened between then and now, but I’m not sure.”  
“I can fill in the blanks,” Lying chirped from their seat. “You went to a Dream and somehow stumbled across Kirin’s house there. You used his altar to try and manifest in the waking world.”  
Lomadia stared at them, thinking, trying to remember. “Yes,” she said. “That seems right.”  
“Then this is little more than a dream within a dream,” Kirin said.  
The blonde just seemed more confused with every word. “Then how do I wake up?” She finally asked.  
“This is the waking world,” Lying told her all too gleefully. “Kirin and I are seeing you because we’re, well, different. No one else can.”  
“What?” Shoving back her chair she rose to her feet, wobbling slightly at the unfamiliar sensation of hooves on the oaken floor. “Am I dreaming or awake?”  
“You see,” Kirin said, “that’s the problem. You are dreaming that you are in the waking world.”  
Lying giggled at the bewilderment in her expression. “You /are/ asleep. They say dreams are windows to another world; that’s not exactly inaccurate. It would be better to say dreams are like glasses that let you see more.”  
“Yes,” Kirin said. “That’s why you saw Lying and I differently - and yourself.”  
“If that’s confusing, then I’m a satyr.” Lomadia’s laugh was sarcastic, laced with venom unconcealed. “Oh, wait, apparently I am.”  
Lying and Kirin shared a short look.  
“We’re terribly sorry for this, Lomadia,” Kirin told her.  
A hand was passed in front of her face, and suddenly the world turned bright, the only exception one figure who seemed to swallow the light.  
The figure, vaguely fox-like, turned to her and grinned its wide, sharp-toothed grin.  
She woke, gasping, from something nightmarish. Nilsey’s friendly face hung overhead, relieved at the sight of her awake.  
“I’ve been trying to wake you up for _hours,_ " he told her, his accent thick and so very welcoming. "What happened?"  
Lomadia sat up, careful not to hit her head on the stairs, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. It felt awkward somehow, like her legs ought to be different.  
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I dreamed I was talking with a god and a nightmare.”  
“I found these in your backpack.” Nilesy held up three bottles of a light blue liquid. “You must’ve done something right.”  
Lomadia took one. The label was large and in handwriting definitely not hers.  
‘Brew of Flowing Spirit,’ it said.  
Beneath that, in smaller lettering, were the words, ‘Please don’t use my altar again, even in your dreams. For your safety.’  
Under that, in a messier, blood-colored scrawl, it read, ‘Your well is very nice. I might visit sometime.’  
Lomadia stared blankly at the writing. She felt she should know where it was from, but, like a dream fading in the morning air, the memories vanished.  
And if she ever saw a glowing figure hunched over her altar, or a shadow-black creature dripping water as it climbed from her well, she kept it to herself.  
But she never could figure out where the third eye came from.


End file.
